Creating a major update devlog and publishing it can make your page eligible for a freshness bump that can place it on the top of the most recent page.
Right, I did that 3 days ago shortly after creating this thread, based on suggestions by others, but it had no effect. It's something worth trying I'm sure, but not something that necessarily works.
Just to make sure you’re getting some visibility I’ve given your page the bump since it looks like an interesting project.
Thanks a lot, I appreciate it.
Still, I'd hope the underlying issue would get fixed for everyone's sake instead of relying on unreliable measures like major release devlogs which may not work, or complaining on this forum to get attention.
The fact is, a game is by all intents and purposes only public (discoverable) once it's indexed. Prior to that it's not searchable and not in the various "Recent" lists. It stands to reason that those lists should use the time of indexing for sorting, rather than the time of page creation. Or to put it in terms of existing functionality, the moment a page is indexed it should get a recency "bump" fully automatic, so that once it gets on the "Most Recent" list for the first time, it should start at the top of that list, rather than way down the page (if the game's page was published long ago, but the game was not indexed back then).
Do you not see the logic in this? That the criteria for inclusion on the Most Recent page and the criteria for sorting on the Most Recent page should match up rather than the sorting being based on a date (page creation) that could be months prior to the game entering the Most Recent page at all (due to being indexed)?
If you believe the current logic makes more sense, I'd really love to see an argument for why that is. It's completely contrary to how most "most recent" lists work, and does not match common sense at all. Plus, most importantly, it lets devs shoot themselves in the foot completely unnecessarily just because they publish a game page before the game is actually available. This is standard practice outside of Itch (generally recommended promotion tactic, and required on Steam). But on Itch doing this same thing will mean your game will not ever be at the top of the Most Recent lists, except if you're lucky that publishing a major update actually works (and know about that trick in the first place).
Since you mentioned Steam, their most recent ranking does not exist. They have a general sortable and filterable list, where you can sort by "Release Date".
You try to equate "most recent" on Itch with "sort by release date" on Steam. But there is no such thing as an official release date on Itch you could sort by. Oh, you can enter such information, I have seen release dates in the future and from before Itch existed.
The default list has every release status in it. Even on hold / cancelled items. So it stands to reason that changing that status should not directly change order. Neither should indexing, as it is not an action by the developer.
Discussing about the expectation from a list called "Most Recent" is interesting, but the term is ambigous. Whom is it most recent to? From developer's perspective, or Itch's, or the user's? I have seen most recent lists, that are more like this "list" here:
https://itch.io/feed?filter=new_games
... only for downloads. Or views. Or search terms. Or like the list of recently made postings.
So what makes a game "recent"?
Itch chose to order it by publishing date, mixed with staff aproved major updates.
You would have it by release status change and indexing change on top.
I would prefer it by updates without need for a devlog. Maybe with a cooldown of up to 3 months, to prevent update spamming to get on top of recent. So it would be a glimpse of the projects currently being worked upon in a most recent ordering.
Oh, and the standard response about anythign related to not being on the index at all or at the wrong place, is, that a developer should never rely on the circumstancial bonus traffic that existing on such lists might give, but to do external promotion.
You try to equate "most recent" on Itch with "sort by release date" on Steam. But there is no such thing as an official release date on Itch you could sort by.
You keep saying that, and I keep saying that it would make perfect sense to sort by time of indexing. This time is when a game is "released" for the public for the purposes of discoverability on Itch, since it's not discoverable before this time, and is discoverable after this time. If it's sorted by time of indexing, each game would start its time on the Most Recent page at the top (for however short a time), just as one would expect.
The default list has every release status in it.
But I'm not talking about release status. I'm talking about indexed vs not indexed, and the Most Recent list only has indexed games in it, while it does not have non-indexed games in it.
Discussing about the expectation from a list called "Most Recent" is interesting, but the term is ambigous. Whom is it most recent to? From developer's perspective, or Itch's, or the user's?
From the perspective of the Most Recent list itself, with Most Recent meaning the most recent game to be included on the list. There is nothing ambiguous about that.
There are many circumstances where can’t have “fully automatic” freshness bumps due to abuse. Certain events related to discoverability for project pages may have the requirement that page has previously been reviewed by a human at some point. Your page previously wasn’t in any queue to be reviewed since it was marked by you as unavailable up until when you changed its status.
Generally speaking, I do not advise developers to depend on the “Most recent” page for discoverability, as there are many games coming through those pages daily. My recommendation is to publish your game and start promoting it to your own channels. Additionally, utilize things like devlogs & major updates to ensure that your page can receive any additional boosts by our system if your page ends up being eligible. All of these can help ensure that your page is prioritized for internal review if needed for the page.
Hope that helps explain a few things
There are many circumstances where can’t have “fully automatic” freshness bumps due to abuse.
Giving a game a "bump" at the time it's indexed for the first time is not a "freshness bump" because it's never been on the index at all prior to this point. It's not like it will result in a game being at the top of the Most Recent list once, and then again when it's indexed, because prior to indexing it's not on that list at all. So my suggestion would only result in the game starting at the top of Most Recent once instead of never.
Your page previously wasn’t in any queue to be reviewed since it was marked by you as unavailable up until when you changed its status
Yes and it was also not indexed before for the same reason. Naturally the first time it's available and thus indexed, it should start at the top of Most Recent, not because of manual review or "freshness bump", but simply because it's the most recent entry to be on the Most Recent page (and in the index in general).
If a game is available from the beginning when it's published (and the dev is in good standing due to prior games) then the game automatically starts at the top of the Most Recent page without any review needed, from my understanding. This is because the time of indexing and the time of page creation happens to be the same. Time of page creation works as the "initial time" used for sorting, without any "freshness bumps" having been applied. All I'm saying is that this "initial time" should not be the time of page creation (where the game may not be indexed at all anyway), but rather the time of being included in the index for the first time.
Generally speaking, I do not advise developers to depend on the “Most recent” page for discoverability, as there are many games coming through those pages daily.
Completely off topic argument. I did do external promotion. But the Most Recent and similar lists on Itch exist, and they do have an effect, so there's reason to want them to work in a sensible way rather than in a way that penalizes games that had a page available long before the game itself was indexed. For reference, here's a comparison between my external promotion vs the effect of getting on those Itch lists when you applied the manual bump.
Many developers simply don't have anything at their own disposal that's as powerful as the eyeballs that those lists on Itch provides. So whether you're comfortable with it or not, the exact logic of how those lists work does have a big effect on which games gets seen or not.
Again, I'm not arguing for any "additional exposure", I'm simply arguing for a different time to be the "initial one" that's used without considering any "freshness bumps". And I'm saying that this initial time should obviously be the time a game is included in the Itch index, rather than a point in time that may be long before that.
Hope that helps explain a few things
Unfortunately not, as it seemed to misunderstand my point and did not present any argument for why using time of indexing as the initial time is not superior to using time of page creation as the initial time.
Unfortunately not, as it seemed to misunderstand my point and did not present any argument for why using time of indexing as the initial time is not superior to using time of page creation as the initial time.
Sorry you feel that way, I’m not trying to ignore your feedback, I’m trying to explain how our system works and how we have mechanisms for pages to re-surface after they’ve already been published for some time.
Can we change how things work? Sure, we regularly are tweaking aspects of indexing and sorting. Thank you for your feedback. But, for the sake of responding to this thread (specifically the title you wrote), I am explaining to you how it currently works so that you (and other readers) may best use that information. The information I am telling you will always be relevant as well: We want to encourage people to write a devlog when they change their page substantially (or even on project launch). We want to encourage people to promote their game their outside channels as soon as they’re ready.
itch.io lets people publish pages in all kinds of different states, and change things around at any time. There are a lot of edge cases that could influence when a page was actually “published”. (For example, in response to your own suggestion: a developer could easily accidentally “publish” their page, then take it down, leave it up for some time as unindexed, then publish it again later and wonder why it’s not showing up in most recent) At this time, the devlog is the “formal” way to acknowledge a substantial update to your page so that the system may consider it for resurfacing in certain sorting algorithms.
Just keep in mind that some stages may require a human review, so there may be a delay before the system processes your page.
For reference, here’s a comparison between my external promotion vs the effect of getting on those Itch lists when you applied the manual bump.
The “manual bump” was more than just an increment of the “date” of your project. I also tagged your game in a way that makes it eligible to appear on the homepage outside of direct recommendations/followers (The “fresh games” section). This is not something that happens automatically, regardless of releasing a page or posting a devlog. This is something that only human reviewer can trigger. The things I advised in my last post will help prioritize your project in our internal queues to enable a human reviewer to discover it.
If you view your referral information you can see a majority of the traffic is coming from itch.io/, which is the homepage. Being on the homepage may have an impact on your page’s global popularity rate which can impact how you appear on other pages as well. Looking at your own analytics in isolation, it’s hard to say exactly what a change in date only would do.
The “manual bump” was more than just an increment of the “date” of your project. I also tagged your game in a way that makes it eligible to appear on the homepage outside of direct recommendations/followers (The “fresh games” section).
I see, thanks for that clarification and for applying that tag.
I also appreciate that you are listening this far and trying to clarify things. With your latest reply I feel we are finally at least talking about the same things.
There are a lot of edge cases that could influence when a page was actually “published”. (For example, in response to your own suggestion: a developer could easily accidentally “publish” their page, then take it down, leave it up for some time as unindexed, then publish it again later and wonder why it’s not showing up in most recent)
Sure, with my suggestion such edge cases would still require a human review, so no worse than today.
But the more sensible case of first having a game not available (and thus not indexed) though it has a public page, and later make it available (so it's indexed) would work much better out of the box without any human review needed.
My point is that using the first time a game is indexed as its "initial time" is just the sensible baseline and has only advantages and no disadvantages compared to using an "initial time" that precedes the game being indexed at all. There is just no argument for using an "initial time" that is earlier than the first time of being indexed.
We want to encourage people to write a devlog when they change their page substantially (or even on project launch). (...) Just keep in mind that some stages may require a human review, so there may be a delay before the system processes your page.
Yes, the human reviews are slow and/or unreliable. Again, I did make a "major update" tagged devlog shortly after my game was available for download and indexed, but there was no effect from that in the three days between I posted it and you applied your bump, so either it was not picked up in human review, or it was still in queue after three days.
This is not a complaint over the human reviews not being more efficient - I know there are limited resources and a huge amount of games and so on. Rather, it just supports my argument that it's sensible to not rely on human reviews for things where the system could be improved in a way that would make some of those human reviews less critical. Anything that can work better in an automated way would both benefit developers and ease the load on human reviews.
